Aging depletes the brain’s protective sugar shield, weakening defenses and fueling cognitive decline, but restoring key sugars may reverse these effects.
What if a critical piece of the puzzle of brain aging has been hiding in plain sight? While neuroscience has traditionally focused on proteins and DNA
DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, is a molecule composed of two long strands of nucleotides that coil around each other to form a double helix. It is the hereditary material in humans and almost all other organisms that carries genetic instructions for development, functioning, growth, and reproduction. Nearly every cell in a person’s body has the same DNA. Most DNA is located in the cell nucleus (where it is called nuclear DNA), but a small amount of DNA can also be found in the mitochondria (where it is called mitochondrial DNA or mtDNA).
Researchers at the Arc Institute, Stanford University, and NVIDIA have developed Evo 2, an advanced AI model capable of predicting genetic variations and generating genomic sequences across all domains of life.
Testing shows that Evo 2 accurately predicts the functional effects of mutations across prokaryotic and eukaryotic genomes. It also successfully annotated the woolly mammoth genome from raw genomic sequences without a direct training reference, showing an ability to generalize function from the sequence alone.
Current genomic models struggle with predicting functional impacts of mutations across diverse biological systems, particularly for eukaryotic genomes. Machine learning approaches have demonstrated some success in modeling protein sequences and prokaryotic genomes. The complexity of eukaryotic DNA, with its long-range interactions and regulatory elements, presents more of a challenge.
AI-powered precision in medicine is helping to enhance the accuracy, efficiency, and personalization of medical treatments and healthcare interventions. Machine learning models analyze vast datasets, including genetic information, disease pathways, and past clinical outcomes, to predict how drugs will interact with biological targets. This not only speeds up the identification of promising compounds but also helps eliminate ineffective or potentially harmful options early in the research process.
Researchers are also turning to AI to improve how they evaluate a drug’s effectiveness across diverse patient populations. By analyzing real-world data, including electronic health records and biomarker responses, AI can help researchers identify patterns that predict how different groups may respond to a treatment. This level of precision helps refine dosing strategies, minimize side effects, and support the development of personalized medicine where treatments are tailored to an individual’s genetic and biological profile.
AI is having a positive impact on the pharmaceutical industry helping to reshape how drugs are discovered, tested, and brought to market. From accelerating drug development and optimizing research to enhancing clinical trials and manufacturing, AI is reducing costs, improving efficiency, and ultimately delivering better treatments to patients.
Many people who have spinal cord injuries also have dramatic tales of disaster: a diving accident, a car crash, a construction site catastrophe. But Chloë Angus has quite a different story. She was home one evening in 2015 when her right foot started tingling and gradually lost sensation. She managed to drive herself to the hospital, but over the course of the next few days she lost all sensation and control of both legs. The doctors found a benign tumor inside her spinal cord that couldn’t be removed, and told her she’d never walk again. But Angus, a jet-setting fashion designer, isn’t the type to take such news lying—or sitting—down.
Ten years later, at the CES tech trade show in January, Angus was showing off her dancing moves in a powered exoskeleton from the Canadian company Human in Motion Robotics. “Getting back to walking is pretty cool after spinal cord injury, but getting back to dancing is a game changer,” she told a crowd on the expo floor.
A small clinical trial, published in Occupational & Environmental Medicine, suggests that melatonin supplementation may help counteract DNA
DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, is a molecule composed of two long strands of nucleotides that coil around each other to form a double helix. It is the hereditary material in humans and almost all other organisms that carries genetic instructions for development, functioning, growth, and reproduction. Nearly every cell in a person’s body has the same DNA. Most DNA is located in the cell nucleus (where it is called nuclear DNA), but a small amount of DNA can also be found in the mitochondria (where it is called mitochondrial DNA or mtDNA).
Shen et al. investigate the use of Lactobacillus plantarum, a commensal bacterial strain, as a chassis for targeting the olfactory mucosa to facilitate precise nose-to-brain delivery of therapeutic molecules. When engineered to secrete appetite-regulating hormones, intranasal delivery of L. plantarum alleviates obesity-related symptoms in a mouse model.
“Can you hand me the… you know… the thingy? It’s right there next to that other doohickey!” Struggling to find the right word happens to all of us. In fact, it even has a name; lethologica, and it tends to become more common as we get older.
Forgetting words now and then isn’t a big deal, but if it starts happening frequently, it could be an early sign of changes in the brain linked to Alzheimer’s disease —long before more obvious symptoms appear. But here’s the twist: A recent University of Toronto study suggests that how fast you speak might be a better clue about brain health than the occasional word mix-up.
When researchers injected mRNA encoding this protein into mice, it produced enough to protect DNA from radiation damage.